Worn Too Thin
by Harkpad
Summary: Turns out back to back missions with a nasty cold are a bad idea, but Clint's perspective has always been kind of crappy when it comes to self-preservation. Clint Whump with minor Clint/Coulson.


**A/N: Just some Clint Whump for an afternoon. It's my mood. Thank you very much for reading!**

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><p>The kicker was that he liked SHIELD missions. He liked them and asked to be kept on the rotation with Hill. That was good, because Avenger business was fun but infrequent. So he took SHIELD missions to fill in the time and because, well, he liked them.<p>

Usually.

Rain pelted his shoulders and soaked his hair in less than a minute, rendering the thin tac jacket he was wearing pretty useless as water slid from his hair under his collar and down his back, leaving a chill in its wake. Clint shifted positions in the perch. He was tucked into a corner between two red brick buildings on a rickety black fire escape and he didn't have much room and had absolutely zero shelter.

The mark was supposed to show sometime in the next five hours, and five hours? That was a long fucking time in the rain.

It might've been okay if he hadn't already been awake on this mission for twenty hours. It might've been okay if Daniels hadn't been coughing his way through a debrief from the last mission two days before the start of this one. It might've been okay if Clint hadn't had only a couple MREs and a granola bar in the last thirty hours.

Instead, all of that was a giant 'fuck you' to Clint's system, and two hours into the rainy wait for the mark, he started to warm up for no reason.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," he muttered as he adjusted his position on the fire escape again. He couldn't sit or kneel, so he was resigned to shifting his feet and allowing himself to lean heavily on the wall behind him as he waited for the signal from Agent-in-charge Norton.

"Barton?" Norton asked over the comms. "You okay up there?"

As a chill ran down his arms he tapped his comms. "Yeah. I kinda need this douchebag to stay on schedule, though." His voice sounded shaky to his own ears and he swallowed thickly, feeling a sore throat kicking in as well.

"Hold tight, Agent," Norton advised. Clint knew she wasn't going to baby him, but she'd also give the order as soon as she could. He liked her.

His teeth started chattering three hours in. He clamped them shut and breathed through his nose until he could get his body back under control, but he could feel himself getting sweaty beneath the chill. Sneezes started thirty minutes later. One more 'hold tight' from Norton and another hour of shivering, sweating, and sneezing left him a little breathless when she finally gave the signal that the mark was on his way and Clint had the shot.

He made the shot easily. Sometimes this sniping business seemed utterly ridiculous. It took twenty-five hours to do five seconds worth of work.

Now he was responsible for getting to the extraction point, and he had to walk two miles. No taxis were permitted in this particular extraction, the city being small enough that witnesses had to be kept to none. Clint was pretty sure the sidewalk wasn't _actually_ slanting uphill and sideways at the same time, but he had a hard time convincing his feet of that.

He pulled his jacket tight around his neck and kept running a hand down his face to force himself to alertness.

He was pretty sure that two miles in thirty-five minutes wasn't what Norton had in mind when they agreed to split up and meet at extraction. She was pacing next to the plane when he stumbled onto the tarmac.

"What the fuck, Barton?"

Clint opened his mouth to answer her but coughed wetly into his sleeve instead.

"Well, shit," she said, and she brushed her own soaked blond hair out of her face and grabbed his bag from his shoulder. "Come on, let's get you home."

The plane wasn't warm, but Norton scrounged a blanket from the pilot's cabin and draped it over Clint's shoulders and handed him a water bottle as she pulled a laptop from her own bag and opened it up. "Let's get this debrief out of the way now so you can head out as soon as we land."

He definitely liked her.

Nick Fury? Sometimes he did _not_ like him. When they landed after Clint snagged a two hour nap on the plane, Sitwell met Clint on the tarmac and steered him by his elbow down the hallway that led very far away from Clint's bunk, despite Norton's call of "he should probably stop by medical!" as they went their separate ways.

"Are you hurt?" Sitwell asked without showing any signs of slowing down as he led Clint to the briefing room level.

"No," Clint said, and then sneezed. "Caught a cold."

"Anything Tylenol won't help?"

Clint weighed his response. Phil and Nat would be pissed if he lied or denied being sick, but maybe some Tylenol _would_ help if the mission weren't too big a deal. "Will the mission be quick?" he asked instead of answering.

"Probably. Weird signals coming from upstate New York. Avengers business." Jasper sounded tired himself, and Clint wondered if a bug was going around the office.

"Okay. No time for a nap. Fine. Throw in an antihistamine and I'll probably be okay," Clint said, but he topped it off with a coughing fit.

Jasper side-eyed him and then sighed as he opened the briefing room door. "Wheels up in ten minutes."

Phil and the rest of the Avengers team were standing at a conference table with a map and a few file folders splayed out in front of them. They looked up when he entered, and Phil's eyes narrowed with concern.

"You look like hell, Clint."

Clint shrugged and nodded. "Caught a cold. Jasper's getting me some meds and I'll be okay."

Natasha shoved one of the files toward him and he picked it up and opened it. He frowned. "Who do I shoot?"

He'd know as soon as they knew, Phil assured him, and sent them all off to gather equipment and meet at the jet. A few deep breaths warded off the nausea threatening to set in and he stood, cracking his neck and stretching out. "Got it. See you in five."

"You look sick," Natasha said as they left the room

"I do not look sick," he deflected. "I look fantastic, like I always do." He looked back at Phil and winked. "I'm okay. Just a cold."

Phil frowned.

"I wouldn't do this if I couldn't, Phil. You know that." He _could_ do it. He was sure he'd be miserable after, but it was a cold. He'd done more with a cold before.

Phil took him at his word.

Clint followed the flight plan and landed in a clearing less than thirty minutes later. They climbed out of the jet and looked at the small town nestled among the trees about half a mile in, but before anyone could say anything an explosion roared up from the tallest building they could see.

"That's our cue," Tony shouted and he and Thor took off. Cap started running and the others followed.

Explosions. These particular bad guys really liked blowing things up. The first fifteen minutes were kind of fun. Clint found a spot on another building and the targets were easy to see and take down. The problem was there were a _ton_ of them. Some madman had created an army, and while they weren't all that tough, they were numerous.

Clint's arm started to shake after an hour, and he growled into his comm. "They're regenerating or something, guys. We need to do more than just pick 'em off." He was also not entirely sure if the jackhammer in his head wasn't making him see double.

That sparked a flurry of activity, and Tony and Bruce both said, "Aha!" at the same time, so it must have been good news. Twenty minutes later all that was left was a smoldering hole where the building had been, but Clint was panting. He put down his bow as Phil called them all back to the plane for onsite debrief. It took him two tries to tuck his bow away because his hands were shaking so hard and his breaths were short and felt like someone was tapping nails into his chest.

He had to climb down four flights of stairs and walk half a mile to get to the plane, though, and on the second flight down, he wondered if maybe this had all been a very bad idea on his part.

He actually lost his footing entirely the last few stairs and ended up on his ass. That was embarrassing. Well, it would've been if anyone had seen it, but thankfully he was alone. He pulled himself back to his feet and held onto the wall of the hallway for a minute, trying to catch his breath and wait for his head to stop spinning. He felt like there was something stuck in his throat, like a pea or a rice grain or something small, and his cough was deep and rattling.

He had no idea how long he stood there trying to gather himself, but he knew his chest was burning and the world kept tipping sideways. "Fuck," he muttered, and Phil caught it.

"Hawkeye, report. Where are you?"

"Request private channel," he croaked out, and Phil confirmed, switching their frequency.

"Clint, what's wrong?"

"Just give me a couple extra minutes, okay?" he said, and he willed his feet to move. "I'm just moving slow."

"Why?" Phil asked, and Clint could hear the worry and confusion laced in his voice.

Clint shoved the door in front of him open, even though it felt like it weighed a hundred pounds, and let the fresh night air cool his flushed skin. He answered, "Um, that cold is kinda turning worse, it seems."

"Worse how?"

"I'm just now leaving the building. Kinda having trouble keeping my balance at this point." He stopped in the middle of the street, locked his knees, and wondered why the street lamps were all bleeding into each other and why the poles were bending at odd angles. He tried to take a deep breath, but it was like he couldn't suck enough air in, and everything tilted again. A chill ran down his back and his knees buckled beneath him and he crumpled to the ground.

"Clint?"

"Can I get a ride?" Clint asked, but the words came out slurred and jumbled, so he just laid his head down in the street. He figured he'd rest for just a minute before trying again. Phil's voice in his ear was rising in volume, and it was making Clint's headache worse, so he took his comm out and set it on the ground beside him. He'd get up and put it back in soon.

He watched the lights turn green and purple and red for a bit and then there were voices in his ear and hands on chest, turning him over to his back. Phil was there, and so was Natasha. They looked worried about something. "What's wrong?" he whispered to Natasha as she smoothed his hair and felt his forehead. She snapped her hand back as if she'd been bit.

"Nat?" he asked, and he couldn't remember where they were. If he was in his quarters he was probably just sleepy and she should leave him alone. "Go on back to your place," he said. "I'll be okay after a nap." She nodded, and Clint smiled at the look of concern in her eyes. He felt a prick in his arm and it felt like cold liquid flushed through his veins and his eyes were fluttering shut. "Don't let me sleep too long," he murmured, and then he couldn't do anything about it. He closed his eyes and slept.

He woke to the sound of a monitor beeping and the taste of cotton in his mouth. He opened his eyes just a crack and saw Phil sitting in a chair with his laptop open. He stretched his fuzzy mind to try and remember what landed him here, and when he did, he groaned. Phil was gonna be pissed.

Sure enough, Phil fixed him with a piercing glare as he closed his laptop and moved to Clint's side.

"Sorry," he said, but the cotton dryness only let him get the 's' out at best. Phil held out a cup of ice shavings and poured a few into Clint's mouth. He sucked gratefully and then blew a breath out of his mouth. It turned into a cough. "Owww," he moaned when he finally quit. "Feels like I've got glass in my chest."

"That would be the pneumonia," Phil said drily. "And did you just try and apologize?"

Clint nodded, figuring that any more attempts to talk would probably prove painful on a couple of levels. Instead, he took some more ice and closed his eyes. Phil looked worn thin and angry, a combination Clint always hated.

"I've already yelled at Jasper and Norton. I think that's enough for now," Phil said, and he brushed a hand through Clint's damp hair. "Downtime is important, even with Avengers business."

"Didn't feel that bad," Clint said, and it came out airy and thin. He sucked a breath in after and Phil put an oxygen mask to his face. The plastic pressed against his cheek and he savored the pure gas moving gently into his battered lungs.

"Well, your barometer is kind of fucked," Phil said with a shrug. "Always has been."

It was true, so Clint just nodded and closed his eyes. His body still felt really, really heavy.

Phil pressed a kiss to his hair and whispered, "Sleep some more. I want to get you home."

When he woke next he could tell a difference, and this time Phil was accompanied by Natasha.

"Told you he was alive," Phil said as he flipped through some files on his lap.

Natasha sat on Clint's bed and pushed the button for him to sit up. She helped him drink some actual water when he was upright and it tasted like liquid gold. He sucked it down aggressively.

"Not too much," She said gently, pulling the cup away. She cocked her head at him and said, "You look like shit, but better than when we found you after the battle."

He nodded. "Bad, huh?"

"Fever of 103, lung capacity at thirty percent, and dehydration," Phil reported blandly from his chair.

"Stark was planning your wake," Natasha said.

"Stark's an asshole," Clint said, but it came out muffled by another cough. After he spat something he really didn't want to look at into a bowl Natasha held out, he leaned back and groaned. "This sucks."

"Tell someone next time, you idiot," Natasha said.

He ignored her unhelpful remark and looked at Phil. "When can I go home?"

Phil sighed heavily. "Well, technically not until you can pass the breathing test, but Dr. Weber knows what kind of patient you are and he knows about JARVIS. He said we could take you to the tower as long as you had oxygen on hand and stayed confined to quarters for a few days with constant monitoring by JARVIS until you can pass the test."

"Dr. Weber's a saint," Clint said with a grin.

"He's just smart," Natasha replied. "Much smarter than you."

"Is that what I can look forward to this week?" he said, crossing his arms indignantly.

"Yes. It's less than you deserve."

When Phil didn't disagree, Clint knew he was in for it.

They bundled him up, forced him to use the wheelchair at the hospital and at the tower, and he was cocooned on his couch in their apartment within the hour. Phil was heating chicken broth on the stove. Clint slept until it was warm, and then slept again after Phil insisted he use a straw and let Phil hold the cup, and slept some more.

The next day Phil repeated the soup routine, added strawberry banana smoothies to the equation, and Clint slept some more. When he finally felt human again a few days later, he stretched out in bed next to Phil and laid his head on Phil's chest. He felt the rise and fall and let the rhythm of Phil's breathing soothe his own still achy chest. Phil ruffled his fingers through Clint's hair.

"Scared me pretty good that time, Clint," Phil whispered after he turned the light off.

"Sorry," Clint whispered.

"I've made arrangements to fix it," Phil answered.

"How?"

"If they're going to use you between Avengers missions, they're going to use me every time, too. I'm the only one authorized to be your handler now."

"Norton was good, Phil. It wasn't her fault."

"She can't be your barometer," Phil replied, running his hand down Clint's cheek. "I can."

Clint had to admit that it was true, and he felt like he could finally breathe again.


End file.
